


The front door's open if you're broken

by loveheartlover



Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, M/M, a tiny toy goat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-04 14:17:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16348307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveheartlover/pseuds/loveheartlover
Summary: Nick is invited back to be a judge for X Factor 2018. He wasn't expecting Louis to be one too.Or for the closeness being on the same panel brings.





	The front door's open if you're broken

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Lucy Spraggan's song "Stick The Kettle On"

Stepping over Pig, who has apparently decided that lounging in the doorframe of the kitchen is the _perfect_ place to get attention at 3am, Nick hunches his shoulder to get his phone even closer to his ear as he listens to Harry’s familiar slow drawl. Nick has an empty glass in one hand, his other blearily rubbing sleep from his eyes. He still has several weeks left of hosting Breakfast, but he’s never been able to resist answering when Harry calls- even if it means sacrificing a few hours of sleep.

“I just think it’s going to be really great for you, I’m so pleased,” Harry is saying, “between the two of you, X Factor isn’t going to know what’s hit it.”

“Two of us?” Nick echoes, distracted as he digs through the fridge for the bottle of orange juice he knows he bought last week.

“Yeah, Louis texted me and the lads when he got the offer. Two of my best mates judging, I’ll have to actually watch the whole series this year.” Harry’s laugh is rough, he has two shows left of his tour and the strain of performing for so long is creeping up on him. He’s normally better about calling during human hours.

Nick has been humming along for most of the conversation, content to just listen to Harry talk, so it takes a while for him to really process what he just said. When he does, his head snaps up into the shelf and he cries out.

“Fuck!” He yelps too loud down the phone, pulling away from the fridge to rub at his tender scalp.

“Nick? Nick, are you all right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Nick says. “Banged my head. Least I’m more awake now.”

There’s a pause, and then, “oh fuck, Nick it’s so early there! Why did you pick up?”

Nick sighs, shoving the fridge door closed and hoisting himself up to sit on the counter beside it instead. Pig’s cold nose nudges at his toes and he grimaces, rubbing her back with a foot. “I was already awake,” he lies. “What were you saying about Louis texting you?”

Harry scoffs but lets it slide; he really must be tired. “When Simon told him he wanted him on the panel this year, he asked us what we thought. He’s really nervous.”

“Sorry, we’re talking about Louis Tomlinson? THAT Louis?”

There’s a pause, a soft exhale, and then Harry says weakly, “you didn’t know?”

Nick isn’t opposed to having Louis as a judge. Despite the picture the press continues to try and paint, he and Louis don’t hate each other. He _likes_ Louis. Well, he does now at least. They aren’t exactly friendly outside of work, but that’s more to do with time zones and not having all that much in common more than anything else. He knew Simon had been talking about getting Louis onto X Factor, but he’d naively presumed he was talking about getting Louis to perform a new song or something. That’d teach him to get distracted on his phone during meetings.

“Why is he nervous? Didn’t he do a panel in America?”

Nick can practically hear Harry shrugging his shoulders. “It’s just different, isn’t it?”

“Does he know I’m one of the judges?” Nick asks.

“Don’t know, I presumed he would, but then I thought you already knew about him. How come you didn’t know?”

“We’re having a meeting tomorrow, well, today now,” Nick says, eyeing the cooker clock balefully. “All of us together for the first time. Honestly, they might have told me before and I just didn’t take it in. Things have been mad.”

Harry hums. He’s been on the end of more than a couple of panicked “I’m leaving my dream job what if it’s the worst decision I ever make?” phone calls in the last few months. Neither of them say anything. Nick slides off the counter and starts the journey back up the stairs to his room, still without juice and with a new pounding headache, Pig scrambling to keep up behind him. From his bedroom door, Nick can see Stinky has made a home in Nick’s warm spot.

“Give him my new number,” Nick says eventually into the quiet, “and tell him to text any time.”

“You’re going to see him in a few hours,” Harry starts.

“And that leaves a few hours for him to get himself worked up. If he doesn’t want it then fine, but give him the option, okay?”

Goodbyes are whispered, Harry yawning every other word as Nick tries to fit his body back into the bed without disturbing Stinky. He has the foresight to plug his phone back into charge, and closes his eyes… only for his alarm to start blaring at full volume the second he finally gets comfortable.

Fucking popstars.

 

 

 

 Unknown  // 10:38

_mute your phone at night you dumbass h feels like shit for keeping you up_

Nick // 11:04

_I was already awake._

Louis T // 11:05

_liar_

Nick // 11:28

_How are you getting to the meeting?_

Louis T // 11:29

_magic_

…

_think they’re sending a car why?_

Nick // 11:38

_I’m driving, want me to pick you up on the way? Save the planet, carbon footprint, yada yada_

Louis T // 11:40

_?_

_I guess???_

Nick // 11:42

_Send me an address and we’ll work out times._

 

 

Nick knows what to expect when he parks in the furthest corner of the Tesco car park, next to a car with tinted windows, but he’s still surprised when the window rolls down to reveal a grinning Louis Tomlinson. He slinks out of the car, a large rucksack over one shoulder, a holdall in his hand, gives a brief nod and wave to whoever is in the front seat, and then opens Nick’s side door. “Oi oi,” he says cheerily, “if I’d known I was going to get personally driven places by THE Nick Grimshaw, I’d have signed on right away.”

“Don’t get used to it, next time you’re playing the chauffeur,” Nick warns, but he’s grinning back. He’s not sure what Harry was on about, Louis looks perfectly comfortable as he shoves his things in the backseat and begins adjusting his chair, propping his feet up on the dashboard and shrugging off his hoodie. “Any reason for all the bags?”

“Only just got off my flight when I texted you and figured there was no point going back to the house, so we went for a drive to kill time.” Louis is digging through his pockets and pulls out a king-sized Twix. “Stick?”

Nick shakes his head, pulling out onto the main road and nodding towards the radio. “Turn it on if you want,” he offers, but Louis is already shaking his head, cheeks puffed out from the amount of chocolate he has shoved in his mouth.

“Fuck I’m starving,” he says through the food, “should have got a McDonalds or something when we were waiting for you.”

“We can get dinner after,” Nick offers without thinking, as if it’s Aimee in the car instead of a relative stranger.

Louis glances at him in surprise, but Nick keeps his eyes firmly fixed on the road, suddenly nervous in a way he doesn’t normally get. _Pull it together_ , he tells himself firmly. They’ve got months of working together ahead, he can’t make things awkward in the first half an hour.

“Yeah, okay,” Louis says. “We can do that.”

They’re both quiet now, Louis staring out of the car window while Nick drives. Occasionally Nick peeks over at him, and he notices that the closer they get to the office building they’re all meeting in, the smaller Louis is making himself in the seat. Soon his knees are up near his chin, arms wrapped tight around them. The next time Nick looks over, he can see Louis’s knuckles are white.

“Do you know who the other judge is?” Nick asks, voice too loud after thirty minutes of silence.

“Not sure. Simon was going to get Cheryl back, but after everything that’s happened she wants to focus on her stuff for a while.” Louis raises an eyebrow. “How come you don’t know?”

“Unless it’s flagged urgent, I’m ignoring most of my emails. Guess I never noticed an updated panel list getting sent through.”

“Ignoring-“

Nick cuts him off. “Where were you flying back from?”

Louis chuckles. “Okay then. I was seeing my boy, since we start filming soon it’s going to be harder to get over there to see him as much I have been, and Bri doesn’t want him flying all the way over here yet. It’s going to fucking suck."

And really, what can you say that?

Once they are parked, Nick hurries around the car to walk beside Louis, bumping his shoulder to get his attention while steadfastly staring ahead. “Ready for this?”

Louis runs a hand through his hair, hoodie thrown over one shoulder. He seems to fight with himself for a moment before sighing. “Bricking it to be honest, mate.”

“Good, that makes two of us.”

Louis throws his head back and laughs properly, knocking back into Nick. “Right pair we are. Come on then, Grimshaw, let’s go make Simon regret hiring us to be on the same panel.”

 

 

 

The meeting is uneventful- things are signed, discussions are had, and Nick spends most of his time Louis-watching. He’s taking everything a lot more seriously than Nick is. He has a _list of prepared questions_ for fuck’s sake. Having already been through this rodeo once, Nick is much more laidback. When they start filming he’ll freak out more, but Nick generally knows what is expected from him. He’s more concerned about the amount of hate he’s going to get on social media for daring to be anywhere near Louis, but that’s a side effect of being near a member of One Direction that he has gotten accustomed to over the years.

Louis is bright-eyed and friendly, calling everyone lad or mate, throwing an arm around Simon like it’s nothing and gently ribbing Nick whenever he spots him looking his way. Nick gives as good as he gets, and it’s fun in a way Nick hasn’t had in a while. Their fourth judge is Lucy Spraggan, and she’s a _delight_ to play with, dancing the line between professional and playmate like she’s been doing this all her life.

As the last of the papers are taken away, Simon calls them over for one final discussion before promising he will set them free. “Categories this year,” he says, “we won’t make any definite decisions today, but if you have any strong feelings, now is the time to make them known.” He’s looking at Louis as he says it, and Lucy and Nick turn their eyes his way as well.

To look at him, you’d never have guessed he spent the drive here looking like a scared kid. Louis oozes confidence as he leans back in his chair, stretching his arms above his head with such a relaxed expression that Nick thinks he must have rehearsed it in his mirror back home. “I won’t say a final no to any of them,” he says, “but I don’t really want the groups.”

“You’d be able to relate to them the most-“ Simon begins, but Louis shakes his head.

“And every time they did something right, it’d be _oh Louis must still have some of that One Direction magic and be spreading it to his groups_ , and when it goes wrong _well no wonder One Direction split up if that’s the best Louis can get out of a group_. I don’t want them, Simon.” When Louis quotes the press, his lip curls into a sneer Nick didn’t know he was capable of. It twists his whole face, turns his twinkling eyes alien and cold. Nick doesn’t like it.

Simon nods slowly. “Okay, we’ll make a note of it. Anyone else?”

Lucy and Nick shake their heads, and Simon claps his hands. “In that case, you’re free to go. I have a dinner date with my son, and I can’t be late. We’ll meet again soon, make sure you’re accessible.”

 _Accessible?_ Louis mouths behind Simon’s back. Nick wiggles his eyebrows. _Accessible,_ he mouths back, making jazz hands. Louis sniggers.

 “Well I’ve got a wife to go and see about a dinner,” Lucy says, “lovely meeting you all.”

Louis walks her to the door, chatting away as he goes, voice filling the room. “You too, love, we’ll all have to get together one day.”

“Your girlfriend?” Lucy asks.

“Ah, no, we ended things a little while ago,” Louis says. Only Nick can see the way the hand behind his back clenches a little as he says it, Lucy oblivious as he keeps on smiling, keeps his voice warm. “But I’d love to meet her, and I’m sure Nick and Simon would too. Sounds a right firecracker.”

“She is,” Lucy grins, “keeps me going. Okay, I’ll invite her to set with me one day. Nice meeting you boys.”

“See ya, Lucy,” Nick calls, waving as she goes before Louis closes the door behind her. He cocks his head at Nick, some of his swagger disappearing as he looks down. Nick speaks up before Louis can start second guessing himself. “So, dinner?”

“Dinner,” Louis echoes. “Out or in?”

“I could do with getting back to the dogs, to be honest,” Nick admits. “How’d you feel about coming to mine?”

Louis frowns. “You aren’t cooking, right?”

“What’s Harry told you?”

“Nothing,” Louis says, too fast, “I just don’t want you to feel like you have to cook if you weren’t planning on it.” He shoves his hands into his tracksuit pockets, shoulders bunched back up like they had been back in the car. There’s still some false bravado there, mainly in the set of his jaw, but the confidence of the last couple of hours is almost completely gone. “Come on, I’ll pay for a takeaway. About time I got to meet the infamous Pig and Stinky.”

 

 

 

There is no graceful way to eat a burger, and Nick gives up trying to after the third expulsion of ketchup down his shirt. Louis is in no better shape, occasionally pausing his systematic ravaging of the burger to lick sauce off his fingers and give Nick a toothy grin. “Thish ish sho good,” he says with hamster cheeks. Pig and Stinky are hovering hopefully by Louis’ knees, Stinky occasionally lolling out his tongue while Pig relies on her eyes to get what she wants.  Louis blatantly ignores Nick’s “don’t feed them” and slips them vinegary chips whenever he thinks he isn’t looking.

“You’d think you’d never had a meal in your life,” Nick says, scrunching up greasy paper. Louis shrugs, shoving the last bite of his meal into his mouth and following Nick into the kitchen to throw away the rubbish. It takes him a minute to swallow, and Nick uses the time to practice his best eyebrow raise.

“We decided to avoid eating anything that even looks unhealthy around the little one,” Louis says, wiping his mouth on his sleeve and ignoring Nick’s carefully arched brow. “So it’s been a while since I had something that artery clogging and delicious.” He pauses, hands moving to his pockets. “Want to see some pictures?” He asks.

“You really haven’t been around me very long if you don’t know that answer is an emphatic yes,” Nick says. “Show me everything.”

He is truly adorable, with a devilish grin that is all Louis. Nick’s favourite is a video of him singing “the itsy bitsy spider” with Louis- except he can’t say spider, so it’s “the itsy bitsy pie-ga.”

Nick’s pretty sure his heart has swollen three sizes by the time it’s finished.

 

 

 

Somehow, Louis becomes a bit of a fixture in Nick’s life after that. If he’s at a loss for what to do, he defaults to spamming Louis with emojis until he responds. Sometimes Louis just shows up at Nick’s door, and they spend a couple of hours talking about nothing and everything. Inevitably, they get papped on runs to the corner shop for snacks. Nick’s favourite picture is one of Louis with a bag of dog treats hanging out of his mouth as he tries to untangle Pig’s lead, while Nick and Stinky hover in the background.

On the morning of Nick’s last Breakfast show, Louis texts before Harry.  

By the time they start filming for X Factor, Nick has given up on checking his Twitter mentions.

A black car rolls up outside of his house at a frankly absurd hour of the morning, a time Nick thought he’d never have to see again after finishing Breakfast. Louis beeps his horn impatiently while Nick fumbles with his keys as he locks the door. “Oi oi, Grimmy,” he calls. “Before we die of old age!”

“Piss off,” Nick says as he gets into the car, “old age my arse. Some of us like to make sure things are done right.”

“Shame you aren’t one of them,” Louis responds, tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth as he reverses back onto the road. “Ready to look beautiful?”

“Darling, I’m always beautiful.” Nick pauses, then adds, “think they have enough concealer to hide my wrinkles?”

Louis scoffs. “It’s the grey hairs you should be worrying about, mate.”

“You’re mean. You are mean and I deserve better friends than you.”

Louis blows a raspberry. Nick blows one back, and they dissolve into giggles. After a few moments, Louis nods his head towards the glove compartment. “Check it out,” he says, a shit-eating grin splitting his face. “Emergency provisions!”

Nick opens the compartment and a metric fuck-ton of nonsense falls into the footwell and onto his lap. Skittles, polos, sandwiches, packets of ibuprofen, a box of tissues, a fluffy blue pencil case shaped like a koala, Mr Men plasters, a pair of socks covered in ducks, the world’s tiniest toy goat, and a tub of play-doh. “I’m sorry,” Nick says slowly, “just what sort of emergency would this stuff cover?”

Louis shrugs. “I dunno, thought I’d cover all the bases. Apart from Knickerbocker, he’s my lucky mascot,” he adds.

 Nick begins the impossible task of Tetris-ing everything back into the glove compartment, still bewildered as to how Louis managed to make it all fit in the first place.

“Knickerbocker being the… goat?” He offers.

“Yup. He came in a Kinder egg when I was, fuck, seven, maybe? And now he comes to everything important. Knickers has been on all the tours. He was at my audition, so I figured he should come back for the first judging session. Full circle and all that.”

“And you called him Knickerbocker because?”

Louis manages to look equal parts bashful and sceptical when he flicks his eyes over to Nick briefly. “I was seven,” he repeats, deadpan. “And a knickerbocker glory was obviously the ultimate dessert goal. Totally goat-name worthy.”

“Totally,” Nick echoes, and they both laugh.

 

 

 

“So why aren’t you checking your emails?” Louis asks, when they are deciding who to put forward for 6 Chair Challenge.

“Sorry?” Nick says, as Lucy argues with Simon about one of the younger girls he wants to send through. She’s good, but with a few more years she could be amazing, and Lucy is worried about how naïve she is. Nick is fully on Lucy’s side, but she seems to be holding her own against Simon so he is happy to check out and mess around with Louis for a few minutes.

Louis is in a scarlet hoodie today, and his ears are rapidly flushing darker to match. “A few weeks ago,” he says, and he leans closer to Nick to speak softly into his ear, “you said you weren’t really checking your emails. I’ve been dying to know why, but wanted to play it cool, y’know?”

Nick knows a lot about playing it cool. The fact he’s managing to follow the conversation when he can smell the apple of Louis’ shampoo is testimony to that. “I feel bad,” he admits, “it isn’t that juicy.”

Louis just quirks an eyebrow and Nick laughs self-consciously, tugging on his scarf. Louis bought it for him after the auditions, to celebrate them getting through the first stage of madness. Nick wouldn’t have picked it out himself, it’s covered in rainbow cartoon bats, but the way Louis’ face had lit up when he saw Nick wearing it when he picked him up today was worth it. “I got into a bit of a prank war with one of my friends, and they put my work email into pretty much every mailing list possible. I get at least 27 horoscopes a day, without including the rest of the nonsense.”

“That’s why you weren’t checking your emails?” Louis asks disbelievingly. “Nick, I’ve lost bloody sleep over this. Thought you were being stalked by some psycho ex or something!”

“Like I said, nothing juicy. Although apparently I should have been watching my back, as a friend is going to turn against me this month. Then again, this one,” and Nick pulls out his phone to show Louis some of the more absurd emails he has been getting, “says I’m going to find true love with a friend by the next full moon. Guess I’d better hope it’s not the same friend!”

“That would be tragic,” Louis nods sagely. “Why a full moon though? Have you got secret werewolf friends I don’t know about?”

“I didn’t write it!”

“You have! You have some secret werewolf boyfriend and you haven’t introduced me. Nicholas, I am hurt.”

“Don’t be a dick,” Nick says, elbowing Louis. Louis elbows back, and it hurts a lot more since Louis has skinny little skeleton elbows. They end up scuffling, play-fighting in a way Nick doesn’t normally indulge in. He’s in his thirties. He doesn’t rough-house.

Which doesn’t explain how ends up with Louis in a headlock, ruffling his hair while Louis loudly laments Nick’s bad taste in werewolf men.

Simon’s cough brings them back, and he gives Nick a pointed look. A little unfairly, Nick thinks, as really Louis started it.

 

 

 

Louis comes over while Nick is packing for Judge’s House, looking far too calm and collected for Nick’s liking. Nick is in panic mode, trying to work out how dressy would be too dressy and packing ten extras of everything in case there is some sort of clothing disaster. In the end, Louis shoves him aside and strips Nick back to the essentials in his case, all those years of living out of a suitcase finally coming in handy.

Dick.

Nick has him sit on his suitcase while Nick forces the zip to close as punishment. Pixie has offered to have the dogs while he is away, so the house is a lot emptier than Nick is used to. He’s glad for Louis’ company, even if he is showing off without realising. Once the suitcase situation is under control, Louis follows Nick downstairs, close on his heels like a shadow. His cool façade has faded into something more guarded, anxiety picking at his features like the way Louis picks at his nails as they collapse onto the sofa together. Nick has learned over the last few weeks that the key to getting Louis to talk is patience- and buckets of it. So he waits him out.

“This is going to be awful,” Louis says mournfully, “I hate saying no to people.”

“You’ll get to see Liam,” Nick reminds him, gently easing one of Louis’ hands away from his mouth before he starts biting his nails. “Get to give all of them a good time before the judging. Proper lads holiday, they’ll love it.”

“Can I text you? If it’s really bad after I’ve said no?” Louis blurts it out, the words tripping over each other as his eyes focus on the blank TV.

Nick frowns. Louis has never, not once in all of the time Nick has spent with him lately, asked him for permission to do something. “Of course,” he says, “I’ll be texting you every fifteen minutes anyway about how much cooler my location is than yours. I have waterfalls, Louis.”

He’s trying to make Louis laugh, but it isn’t working. If anything, Louis’ eyebrows knit even further together as he wrings his hands, before suddenly he lunges forward and presses a kiss to the corner of Nick’s mouth.

It’s a bitterly sweet kiss, a shock of tea-warm lips, a barely there brush of skin before Louis pulls back, a rabbit in the headlights. Nick thinks he can actually see Louis’ pulse racing in the flicker of his eyelashes. He needs to take a breath, and in that second of non-reaction Louis’ confidence shatters in front of him.

Louis stumbles to his feet, apologies and excuses rattling from his tongue like white noise as he backs away.

“Lou-“ Nick begins, not sure where he is going, what he wants to say, but he knows something is better than nothing right now. Unfortunately, Louis is already legging it out of the door, the door frame rattling as a sudden gust of wind slams it shut behind him.

Nick // 19:53

_L? Talk to me?_

 

 

 

Nick has never been so grateful to see Harry. Rita has taken it upon herself to hang out with the girls and offer them some advice away from the cameras, the girls won’t officially get to meet the guests until tomorrow morning, so Nick has roughly 15 uninterrupted hours of Harry time to work out the Louis problem.

He doesn’t expect Harry to refuse to help.

“I’m not refusing to help,” Harry objects as Nick throws pillows at him. “I’m just saying you need to talk to him.”

“He’s not replying!”

“Well, obviously,” Harry says, narrowly missing getting smacked in the face with one of the fancier sequin pillows. “Give him time. He’s embarrassed.”

“But why did he do it?” Nick asks.

“You cannot be judging someone for running and ignoring their problems,” Harry says pointedly. Nick stops throwing pillows. He eyes up the boots lined along the far wall. Those would _definitely_ hurt a little more.

“You are being deliberately obtuse.”

Harry follows Nick’s gaze and sighs. “You’re not an idiot, Nick. You know why.”

When Harry has left for his own room, Nick finishes unpacking his suitcase. Hidden in one of the side pockets, he finds the world’s tiniest toy goat. He doesn’t expect his heart to clench in quite the way it does. Looking down at the little goat, he can smell apples. He can feel stubble on his cheek. He can taste tea. He can hear the laughter of a little boy singing with his dad.

Nick finds his phone.

Nick // 22:32

_[picture]_

_Waterfalls are way cooler. Knickerbocker agrees._

Louis // 22:35

_he has good taste_

Nick // 22:38

_So do you._


End file.
